“Maybe he believed that seeing well/adds being to our brief/reservoir, our breviary./Not that sight is prayer, or memory/faith. Maybe attention is:/a long look at silver maple leaves’ downy/undersides, blue silver like snow-fox,/but duller,…

“It’s a warm December in Washington,/a few days before Christmas, the slaughterhouse/of men quiet, those around the lieutenant general/eager to repeat news of victory they know comes/at a price, even if the war…

“I’m preaching to myself, he would say, as if the belief that the grace of a common bread was easier for us to comprehend than the oracle of his mouth; that his humanity…

“We need a designated verb tense for this indeterminate present. What day is this, we wonder, what month? The one thing we’re not foggy about, however, is the time. You’d think that the…

“Allergic to their stings, you see my words as bees./For all their softness, you see something hidden./They ask for what you can but will not give: a child,/And hidden in the mildness of…

“Our masters and almost friends,/in lab coats and white Cossack smocks,/floated like ghosts across the hillside,/holding our leashes, staring blindly/at the lens./Sniffing, loafing, eager, and at ease,/everything excited us!”—By Richard St. John Speculative…

“Then—/when the once sturdy barrier/is too old; beyond repair—/down to some skeleton/of former fence glory,/the meadowlarks seek new perches/to sing prairie songs/on last autumn’s stakes/of mullein stalks,/yellow breasts glowing like rising suns,/as the…

“The world will wrestle you into place and pin you/down while the weeks slip past./Don’t be/so easily corralled. Buck it./Go visit your fucking folk.”— Jacob Boyd Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly…

“They play at being retired or married, spend the night in a featherbed four feet off the floor, where/they make love, where she crawls beneath the covers and the bed creaks with no…

“In a civilization or a family no one knows what comes next./Not the protozoa. Not the whelk./ When we rise, washed smooth, we pat each other/because we are surprised to find each other/more…